Types of Families

Could you please talk about your family?

What do you think of your family life?

Does a family play a key role in one's life?

1. Great changes have taken place in the types of families over the last 100 years. In the past, parents, their children, and their children's children often lived together in a big family. Such a big family is called an extended family. In some places, this type of family even included relatives by marriage, who are called in laws, as well as the sons and daughters of brothers and sisters, in other words, nephews and nieces.

2. Nowadays, in many countries, the extended family is no longer very common, Instead, only two generations, parents and children, live together. This is called a nuclear family. There are some reasons for that. First of all, young people are becoming independent financially. Therefore, they are unwilling to depend on their parents. Secondly, these days the youth want to have their own privacy. Thirdly, children are supposed to become more independent and responsible, and develop a closer relationship with their parents.

3. However, in the United States, the number of the nuclear family is also decreasing because of the influences of some factor such as divorce. As a result, there is an increasing number of single parent families, or families with only a mother or only a father. In addition, another kind of family is appearing, which is called a blended family. This is a family in which two person remarry. These two persons both once got divorced, but have children. In the new family, they make both groups of children live together.

4. There is another type of family with double income but no kids. namely DINK. DINK family chooses not to have children for many different reasons. One of the reasons is that more and more young couples don't want to take too many responsibilities. They just want more freedom for themselves.